Rio de Janeiro

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After eighteen hours, two flights and numerous card games, we arrived in Rio de Janeiro. Driving through the city, directly to our left, cranes towered for miles, whilst to our right, favellas sprawled into the horizon eating up the hillside. The motorway became a clear indicator of the extreme wealth divide of a city in transition.

Our first two nights were spent in the inner city area of Catate within walking distance of the Flamengo beach which became our first port of call. The beach, though not the biggest in Rio, lies in the shadow of Christ the Redeemer and overlooks Sugarloaf Mountain (affectionately re-christened "Sugar Hill Gang Mountain" by Pete). The views were truly spectacular despite the heaped cloads which hung heavy in the sky over the sea.

As the weather improved on our second day, it became apparent that we had to sieze our opportunity to visit Christ the Redeemer before the statue became consumed by the clouds again. So we set off by bus to the foot of the mountain to find every train to the top fully booked. After pottering around the station for a while we found a taxi company that offered to drive us up to the monument for a reasonable price. At the top, the sun beat down over the city providing us with stunning views of Flamengo, Copacabana, Ipanema and Sugarloaf Mountain. It is clear to see why this is considered one of the modern wonders of the world.

Later in the evening, we returned to our hostel and began talking to a few fellow residents and, after a home made meal of rice and vegetables and copious amounts of red wine, we venturned into Lapa, a re-urbanised, largely Bohemian area of the city. We were informed that the following night (Friday) would be better for atmosphere, however we still went along and enjoyed a few drinks in a large square in the night shadow of a disused aquaduct with our new found friends Rafael and Lucas, two Samba dancers from the south of Brazil, and Marcus, a lone Finnish traveller with an expert knowledge of Premier League football and a keen eye for local women.

After polishing off a few four litre towers of beer the previous night, Friday morning was not met with mass enthusiasm. Rather, we awoke ten minutes before our designated check-out time de-hydrated and deflated. The commute to our next hostel in Ipanema, would only make us feel worse. After under-estimating the distance of the beach, the intensity of the mid-afternoon sun and the weight of our own rucksacks, we trekked down the Ipanema strip losing our body weight in sweat in the process. However, the night that followed would soon make up for any upset caused by our lax organisation skills.

Along with the majority of our new hostel (Ocean View), we retunred to Lapa for a second dose of the party atmosphere. What we were greeted with upon arrival was sheer pandamonium. The previous night proved itself a mere shadow of the unfolding chaos in the streets. There were people everywhere; street vendors, musicians, beggars and of course, fellow revellers. At no point were we made to feel unwelcome or threatened by the locals. What seemed to us to be a carnival full of vibrant music and a diverse mix of people to us, turned out to be (as we were later informed) a standard Friday night in Lapa.

We soon found ourselves consumed by the crowd, dancing to a live band playing their own adaptaions of classic Reggae songs, drinking cocktails, overwhelmed by our surroundings. As the music petered out, the streets remained busy and we took a table at a street side bar. It was at this point that Mike, with his back facing towards to street, fell backwards in his chair tumbling into the cobbled street as forty to fifty locals swarmed around him chanting the words "Gringo! Gringo!" Rather than assess his well-being or help Mike up, we joined in with the baiting, much our amusement and his dismay.

When the night ended and we left our taxi outside the hostel, the sky was slowly warming up and the early morning clouds, awash with red and bronze, beckoned us to the beach. We lay on the beach as the sun crawled up over the eastern horizon lighting up the high-rise, glass fronted buildings of Ipanema as it did so. This was truly beautiful and we duly lapped it up.

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